Blog

23/03/2018

A Pax Christi meeting in Glasgow looks like leading to exciting developments. Justice & Peace vice-chair Marian Pallister reflects on the possibilities.

The invitation went out last November – following an ecumenical Pax Christi conference last summer entitled Reclaiming Gospel Nonviolence, there was to be a meeting to explore setting up a Pax Christi Scotland. And so, on a chilly February Saturday, around 25 people from all over Scotland came together in Glasgow for that exploration.

It is perhaps testament to how important we felt this ‘exploration’ could be that delegates travelled from the Borders, from Aberdeenshire, and from Argyll, as well as from many parts of the central belt. Some were rooted in the anti nuclear campaign, others in Catholic Social Teaching that seeks, as Pope Francis has reminded us, to move towards a holistic nonviolent society. We all shared a hope for peace in all facets of society.

As the day progressed and our intentions rose to the surface of our discussions, it became clear that the majority shared the idea that Scotland has its own identity, its own culture, and its own picture of peace. We wanted a Pax Christi Scotland.

As we moved towards this conclusion, there was a surge of positivity. We may be about to punch above our weight, reach beyond our pay grade – any cliché in the book that suggests we will be very small fry in a very big pond – but if we don’t give it a try, we will simply sit on the coat tails of Pax Christi England and Wales, however efficient and effective that organisation may be. We have things to say on the international stage about peace, and establishing Pax Christi Scotland will allow our voice to be heard.

We will, of course, be bound by Pax Christi’s mission statement – why would any organisation with the temerity to aspire to being part of the international Pax Christi change a word? That statement speaks of:

• Peace – based on justice. A world where human rights are respected, basic needs are met and people feel safe and valued in their communities.

• Reconciliation – a process that begins when people try to mend relationships – between individuals or whole countries after times of violence or dispute.

• Nonviolence – a way of living and making choices that respects others and offers alternatives to violence and war.

But what an exciting step forward - and one that we hope will gather in all those who believe in the concept but have felt themselves on the fringe of something that mainly happens south of the border.

Baby steps, of course. There are procedures to follow and to enable them, we ended that Saturday meeting with hands going up to identify volunteers for a steering committee. Those of us whose hands seemed to rise of their own accord – or was that the Holy Spirit tugging and telling us there was a task for us to get on with? – are now wondering what fine mess we’ve got ourselves into this time, Ollie.

The idea is to start Pax Christi Scotland under the wing of Justice and Peace Scotland, which of course, shares and promotes all of the Pax Christi ideals. That will allow us to meet the criteria set down by Pax Christi International, seek the approval of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference and hopefully engage the interest of a Bishop President. When the time is right and the requirements have been fulfilled, we aim to fly solo.

We’re recruiting for peace! We – Grace Buckley, Hugh Foy, Rosalyn Mauchline and me – want to hear from you because we want everyone who believes in peace and nonviolence to share this exciting moment when this new initiative is in its embryonic state. Help us to nurture it. We can achieve peace if we work for justice.

16/03/2018

South Sudan - The Forgotton War

In our new blog Jennie Chinembiri reflects on the tragedy of South Sudan and a project in peace building undertaken by the Church of Scotland.

The first and only time I have visited South Sudan was in early 2012. As the newest nation in the world, it was a country full of hope. People were migrating from the North back to the South with a hope that they hadn’t had for years. This was their country and they were going to build this new nation up.

Sadly, less than two years later civil war broke out. It was devastating listening to our partners, hearing the stories of what was happening, and seeing pictures of buildings and homes that I had visited now lying in ruin or burnt to the ground. It was difficult to comprehend that Malakal, the town our church partners had been based in and the town I had spent time in, was now a ghost town.

What could we do to help? The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan visited our General Assembly in 2014 and told us how he stood at the entrance of the church compound in front of rebels with guns, and refused them entry. He had a duty to protect those in his care. The rebels listened and lives were spared.

It was on this visit that he invited our then Moderator, the Right Rev John Chalmers to visit Juba in 2015. During this visit John spent a morning with around 80 or so church members delivering a session on mediation. John told me how people had arrived at the session and met friends that they believed had been killed. It was a meeting at which emotions were raw.

After this session, our partner asked us to do more, and not to forget. So, we as a Church have embarked on a journey with the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan. We have begun working with them to deliver mediation skills and also touch on trauma healing. We have had two workshops, both in Nairobi due to security issues, at which we have begun to develop a deeper relationship with these church leaders and hear their stories first hand.

We are now looking forward to welcoming nine of these leaders to Scotland on 5th March for a two and a half week programme, which will focus on peace building, mediation and trauma healing, and will end with a retreat. We had hoped to bring 11 leaders, but two have had their visas rejected, something we are currently fighting and hoping the home secretary will overturn.

It is a privilege to work with these men and women who have experienced and seen a level of suffering that we can only imagine. They want to share their stories. They don’t want the world to forget about South Sudan. We hope that in some small way we can help them to do this.

09/03/2018

Sciaf Sunday - 11th March 2018

Marian Pallister, SCIAF ambassador for the Diocese of Argyll & the Isles and Justice & Peace vice chair reflects on the country on which the Wee Box campaign focuses this Lent.

It was the first time I had been to a war zone, if you discount passing through the checkpoints of Northern Ireland. The preparation in itself was complicated – the rushed vaccinations, the visa for Thailand, the rather vague information about how we would contact the Scottish Red Cross nurse we were to interview in the refugee camps on the border with Kampuchea and Thailand.

For that is what Cambodia was called between 1975 and 1979 by the ruling Khmer Rouge, and I was travelling with a photographer to report on the end of a bloody conflict that left millions dead and thousands homeless.

It was a byzantine story that led to this humanitarian disaster. The Vietnamese had occupied eastern Cambodia, the US carpet bombed the area, and the Cambodian politician Norodom Sihanouk, leader of the Khmer Rouge, presented himself as a man who could achieve peace. Instead, he led his people into genocide. Now the International Red Cross was trying to pick up the pieces, setting up a tented city on the north-east border of Thailand to receive the refugees from each side of the conflict.

It was tense. The Thai soldiers guarding the camps were trigger-happy. The Red Cross personnel were there for three-month stints and were physically and emotionally done in. There was no technology to record who these people were or how many. No system to track the unaccompanied children and reunite them with the remnants of their families. Huge boards went up at the gate to every camp with photographs of the children – a haphazard attempt to let frantic relatives find their offspring. But the children took the pictures down and gave them to nurses, doctors, the Scottish dentist who’d arrived out of nowhere to fix shot-up faces and save people from starvation. They wanted someone who would care now, not the vague possibility of a happy-ever-after reunion.

One child, Ra, latched onto me as we toured the camps and did our interviews – the dying elderly couple, the man showering under a bucket, balancing on his remaining leg, the woman whose husband was shot as an ‘intellectual’ because he wore glasses. Ra clutched my hand and broke my heart. I didn’t know what would become of her.

‘Cambodia’ came back into existence in the 1990s. Those camps remained in place for decades. Girls like Ra might well have ended up in the sleazy sex parlours of Bangkok – or she might have slipped back into the steaming tropical forest and tried to re-create a life for herself. If she survived, she would be a middle-aged woman by now.

The country was devastated. The American bombing had destroyed much of the infrastructure and the Khmer Rouge did the rest. Cambodia became a graveyard and its population is still trying to pick up the pieces.

And that’s why the Lang family on our SCIAF Wee Box this year deserves our attention. Four decades isn’t enough to stick the pieces of a country and a culture back together again and rural families like the Langs are prey to a continuing lawlessness.

Families like the Langs depend on fish in the huge, languid rivers of Cambodia. But gangs have used dynamite and electrocution to steal fish stocks. Then they move on and leave the rural fishing families devastated.

SCIAF has worked with a local partner to create an advocacy system to help such families, and now local fishermen liaise with the police to patrol the rivers. The Langs are in a better situation now, thanks to your generosity – and by working to secure peaceful solutions, Cambodians have the kind of future I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime.

Let’s fill our Wee Boxes. Be generous on SCIAF Sunday (the UK government is doubling what SCIAF raises). We might just be helping that wee lassie who held my hand to live out her life in peace.

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